The invention is directed to removal of condensate liquid and vapors from a conventional air conditioning system employed in a habitable structure or enclosure and more particularly to a system of removing toxic fumes from a home, office, or the like by means of a conventional air conditioning system, the air circulation of which is substantially closed to the atmosphere.
It has been found that working in an office with an energy efficient heating, ventilating and air conditioning system can be hazardous to the health. Particularly those systems which are a product of the energy crisis of the 1970's.
Rising costs of energy focused attention on heating and cooling of newly constructed buildings. About one third of the cost of operating a building goes toward heating or cooling the air inside and moving it around.
Standard practice in the past had been to exhaust some of the interior air and replace it in the system with fresh atmospheric air from outside of the building which is heated or cooled. It was found that heating and cooling bills could be reduced by only recirculating air within a building, leaving less atmospheric air to be treated and added to the system.
This modernized energy efficient concept produces many sources of irritation to people within the buildings. In new buildings likely sources of indoor air pollution are chemical, and include the materials from which a modern office is constructed and furnished. Formaldehyde fumes escape from furniture, upholstery, wood paneling, drapery or carpet fabrics. Solvents and adhesives emit fumes. Copying machines and other photochemical reactions produce ozone. Occupants produce carbon dioxide and water vapor.
In older buildings offices produce dust, mildew, old tobacco smoke, flaking paint and asbestos insulation, flooring or roofing materials, and as in new buildings as well micro-organisms from people, animals and plants.
Any new air which enters old or new buildings contain traces of all sorts of environmental toxic vapors such as, for example commercial solvents, acid, undesirable odors and the like.
In general all air conditioning systems collect and drain condensate from the evaporator or "A" frame unit from damp circulating air through a conventional "P" trap drain system. The use of such a "P" trap drain system is taught by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,131,548; 3,691,786 and 4,280,334.
The condensate from the air conditioning systems is a result of removing moisture from the damp circulating ambient air as it passes the reduced temperature evaporator. This condensate also includes a concentration of contaminates removed from the circulating air. Vapor contaminates are collected and concentrated around or near the evaporator as a result of reduced evaporator temperature. In the present air conditioning systems this concentrated vapor is ignored and allowed to return to the circulating air of the system. The above mentioned U.S. Pat. No. 3,691,786 further increases the contaminate vapor released into the circulating airstream by elevating the temperature of the condensate which is contained with the drip tray as a means of cooling the refrigerant exiting the evaporator. Condensate in excess of a given pan level is drained from the systems in a conventional manner through a "P" trap. Although some of the condensate vapor from the heated condensate liquid exits to atmosphere a considerable amount is returned to the circulating airstream. Further there is no teaching in this reference as to mold, etc. in the condensate tray as the moisture therein begins to evaporate while the air conditioning system is inoperative.
Until the emergence of the instant invention there has not been a successful method of removing substantially all of the contaminates from the treated air of building air conditioning systems.